Luthuli House Meeting Over Missing 68 Votes Contoversy

The party is trying to prevent the matter being taken to court.

ANC members during the party's 54th national conference at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg, December 18, 2017.

ANC leaders are expected to meet at the party's headquarters today, in attempts to resolve the controversial 68 votes that went missing at its national conference earlier this week.

EWN reported that ANC leaders are expected to meet with disgruntled party members to prevent the matter from landing in court –– and that the delegates, mostly from Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, are demanding that all their votes be added to the final top-six tally.

4,776 voting delegates attended conference, but only 4,708 votes were counted in the secretary-general poll. Senzo Mchunu, the former KwaZulu-Natal ANC chairperson, lost the secretary-general position to Free State chair Ace Magashule by 24 votes on Monday night.

Later, Magashule announced that after an assessment of the votes, 16 extra votes were awarded to Mchunu –– but that was still not enough to take the position from Magashule.

The lawyer representing the members, Dexter Selepe, reportedly told EWN that the meeting on Friday will determine what happens next.

The debacle threw the conference into disarray, with the Zuma camp threatening to call for a new election of the entire top six, if a new vote for secretary-general had to be conducted. Ramaphosa's allies eventually had to cut their losses and back down.